Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University and MIT just across the Charles River from Boston, does not have its own airport or a cluster of on-site rental counters, so a literal search for car rental in Cambridge quickly leads travelers to the wider Boston metro rental network instead. The nearest major airport is Boston Logan International (BOS), roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes away depending on the bridge or tunnel route and time of day, and most visitors who want a car for day trips out of the city pick it up there or at one of the smaller neighborhood rental locations scattered around Cambridge and Boston proper rather than expecting an on-site counter in Harvard Square or Kendall Square.
Cambridge itself is a compact, walkable, transit-rich city, and most residents and visitors get around on foot, by bike, or on the subway without ever needing a car for daily life within the city. A rental car becomes genuinely useful for day trips beyond the immediate metro area: coastal towns north of Boston, the western Massachusetts hills, or destinations in New Hampshire and Vermont that are impractical without one. Renting from a Cambridge-area location and driving out of the city avoids the added cost and congestion of picking up directly at Logan, though it does mean navigating city traffic before reaching the open highway.
Driving is on the right throughout Massachusetts, and traffic around Cambridge and Boston is often heavy and unpredictable, with narrow one-way streets, aggressive merging, and rotaries that take some getting used to for out-of-town drivers. Parking is scarce and often metered or permit-only near the universities, so a rental car is far more useful once you are headed out of the city than while you are still inside it. Planning your pickup location around your actual route, rather than convenience alone, makes a Cambridge-based rental noticeably less stressful overall.